My English prof looks like a sketch of a human, just three hundred-odd bones stacked together haphazardly and covered with a thin net of skin to keep the mosquitos off. She comes rattling through the door in a tame suit with matching lipstick and I cower and quake in my chair like Jaime Lee Curtis in Halloween. She, prof not Curtis, terrifies me to an absurd degree and I don’t know why. It can only partially be ascribed to her status as a walking skeleton, a creepy image even beyond childhood.
My whole body goes on alert when I see her. I start sweating, and my heart pounds to be let out, and my stomach begins inexplicably to growl no matter how much I’ve eaten before class. I feel like a third grader. I want her to like me. I want her to invite me to join the gifted and talented program; I want her to send the class teddy bear home with me today. I wish we could have back to school night so that I could hover next to her while she says nice things about me to my parents. I wish I could hide under the desk when I see her.
I already hate the teacher’s pet, who is, unfairly, a natural blond. Plus, her name is Stevie, a name popularized by the hugely cool Stevie Nicks. She should be stuffed in a barrel and dragged down Main Street by a team of four white horses. I knew that the manuscript was discovered in 1908. You don’t have to be such a showoff, brainiac.
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